The Tyranid Swarm

Subject: The Tyranid Swarm Sat Aug 21, 2010 1:15 am

The Tyranids are an extragalactic alien race, whose sole purpose is the consumption of all forms of genetic and biological material in order to evolve and reproduce. Tyranid technology is based entirely on biological engineering. Every function is carried out by living, engineered creatures, each of which collectively forms the Hive Fleet, directed by a single Hive Mind.

Within the Tyranid swarm there is no idea of individualism as each unit is linked to the next in a form of swarm consciousness. There is only one reason for the creation of any of the forces involved in Tyranid armies; to implement the will of the swarm, be it a Hive Tyrant or Ripper Swarm. This consciousness is commonly referred to as the Hive Mind.

Certain Tyranid units are considered Synapse Creatures, whose job it is to control the lesser species within the swarm. They are capable of receiving and sending orders which they received from the Hive Mind and this connection is vital to the effective running of the Tyranid race for, without it, the swarm would collapse into disarray. Usually they are fielded in relatively large numbers to allow a rapid advance of the lesser creatures to remain in range of a synapse creature.

Hive Fleets are massive locust-like Tyranid swarms, comprising billions of creatures including the actual bio-ships, living spacecraft used to cross interstellar space and the voids between galaxies. Each creature of the Hive Fleet is an inseparable part of the Hive Mind.

An entire Hive Fleet is directed by the single coordinating will which is its Hive Mind, formed from untold billions of individual consciousnesses, each of which is a living creature in the fleet. Mankind still searches vainly for the higher beings they suppose control the Hive Fleets, and though such mighty creatures exist, they no more control the Hive Mind than single brain cells control a man's body. It is the sum of the Hive Mind which motivates it, not its constituent parts.

The bio-ships contain everything required to sustain the fleet; some ships being purely for crushing resistance, the larger ships contain birthing pools to create the huge land armies of the Tyranids and even more ships when the need arises. The nutrients used as food and raw material are replenished by scouring conquered planets of every cell of biological matter, including all the Tyranids it seeded onto the planet. Because the Tyranid forces are recycled in this way, the "design" of the Tyranid warriors can be altered by genetic engineering, allowing the Tyranid forces to rapidly adapt to overcome any enemy. Further, the Tyranids absorb the DNA of defeated enemies, allowing for further genetic diversity. It is believed the Genestealer and Broodlord are derived from Human DNA, the Zoanthrope from Ul'damnian and the Biovore from Ork DNA.

By the adaptive nature of the Hive Fleets, fierce resistance on a planet will only make the fleet stronger in the end; for this reason only a few tactics have been found to work. The first is to draw the Tyranids into a large ground battle, forcing the fleet to deploy as large a ground force as possible. Once this is achieved, the planet is evacuated, following with Exterminatus as the Tyranids strip the life of the planet. This tactic is effective as Hive Fleets are dependent on the impetus gained from absorbing each conquered planet; the Hive Fleet will also have lost the biological "energy" expended to conquer it, including all of the bio-material of the ground forces and by the nature of Exterminatus will not be able to recover any from the planet. This tactic is extreme and also damaging to the Imperium, as it destroys a valuable and habitable planet every time. It has been projected that there may not even be enough habitable planets in the galaxy to stop the Tyranid threat, especially if more Tyranid fleets arrive from outside the galaxy.

Swarm lord
The Tyranid Swarm Swarmlord